Foes of Clothes and Carpets. 133 



have given up all hope of trying to make the place look 

 like anything with all those animals tracking up the 

 floor.) Only so long as the disagreeable odor is in its 

 prime freshness will the moth refrain from laying her 

 eggs in the clothes so protected. 'But if the moth is shut 

 up with the clothing and cannot get out, she will lay her 

 eggs anyway, and the}' will hatch out, and the worms 

 will fret the garments, and the garments will fret the 

 housekeeper that put her trust in camphor. Dr. Howard, 

 the entomologist of the United States Department of 

 Agriculture, and a man that knows what he is talking 

 about, says that the best way is to beat, brush, and sun 

 the articles to be stored, put them into those large paste- 

 board boxes that tailors use to send home clothes in, and 

 gum a strip of wrapping-paper around the edge so as to 

 seal all up completely. The moth cannot get in to lay 

 her eggs, and the wearer of the garments will not be 

 plagued with the smell of the preservatives which is 

 scarcely less an annoyance to him than to the moth. 



Quite a rainbow of promise was spread in the sky of 

 hope by the entomologist Balbiani. There is a sort of 

 fungus called muscardine, that kills off the silkworm. 

 He powdered this up and sprinkled it over clothes in- 

 fested by moths. The grubs ate it and died. But you 

 know r that if you were to cultivate burdock and your 

 whole living depended upon a good crop the plants, 

 otherwise indestructible, they would die if you so much 

 as looked at them. So, this muscardine, which is a perfect 

 pest to the silk-worm breeder, loses its strength if kept 

 any time. The rainbow of promise that looked so beau- 

 tiful in the sky of hope has faded. There is no royal 

 road to freedom from moths, and to the end of time we 

 shall probably have to beat and comb and sun our furs 

 as in the days of Noe. 



